Hi! I'm Patricia. Unless the site gets hacked, all entries are written by me. Which is said neither with a whole lot of pride nor much embarrassment. Like many a personal blog, the entries revolve around me. And let's face it, if you can't be vain on your own blog then where can you be vain? All to say, if you're looking for the latest on world news, celebrity gossip, or the next election, this probably isn't where you wanted to be. But thanks for stopping by! A little more about me...

Sunday, November 26, 2017

The home study is almost done. I had the last of the three visits with the social worker almost two weeks ago. Friends have shared with me that they’ve spoken with her and that she seems to like me. Which is nice; obviously it’s a good sign when the person writing a report that can put a halt to the entire proceedings seems to think you’d make a good parent.

Now that I’m closer to actually starting the placement process I’m experiencing moments of hope and excitement. But, because this can be a long process, I keep pushing those feelings back. I keep thinking, “there are a ton of positive, good adoption stories. Why couldn’t one of those be yours?” And I think about the odds, which makes me wish I had been better at math. That’s not really how it works, though is it? There’s no amount of logic that will make this go faster, that will ensure that if and when I get a child that I get to keep the child. When you spend your whole life hoping for the best but planning (and expecting) the worst, allowing the seed of hope to flower is a dangerous, potentially painful thing.

Still, all those words aside, I ordered this today.

Throughout the years I’ve stitched a number of birth announcements for other people. This would be the first time I’ve made one that I intend to keep. In the past, dong something like this has taken up to a year and since this process can take up to 2 years, I clearly may have more than enough time. I always say that I’m not superstitious but there is a part of me that worries this might be jinxing things. Still, after doing birth announcements for friends’ babies, I can’t imagine not having one for my own and once I have a child there’s no way I’ll have the time (or energy). It’s essentially now or never. I’ll just have to make sure I manage the feelings. That there will be feelings is a given. I just have to make sure I let the good ones have equal or more time than the scary, anxious ones.

Thursday, November 16, 2017

As soon as I heard Samatha Bee say this today I just knew I had to stitch it so I spent some time this evening gridding it out. I considered changing it to “my bitches” but decided it was best left alone.

Little tip, when doing something like this, it goes better and faster if one can spell the really difficult words like “down” for example.

Monday, April 24, 2017

Shutterfly has this promotion via their app that allows one to order 4x4 or 4x6 cards for free, not including shipping. As I unpack and prepare the spare bedroom* for use as an office/craft space, the urge to send snail mail has struck me again. So, the offer of “free” photos seemed serendipitous. I ordered a bunch and I’m here to tell you that when they say unlimited, they mean it. Well, unlimited in the sense that you can order many prints (but only 9 of each at a time). Still, I’m not about to quibble. As the photos have been arriving I’ve been cataloging them. Once I came up with a storage solution (thankfully a couple hundred photos don’t actually take up much space) I realized that maybe I went a little too overboard. With the number of photos I’d ordered, I’d have to write to a good number of people a week to make a dent in the cards. Which isn’t much of a problem, really. It just comes down to focus but having just learned that Bunheads is on Freeform.com yesterday, focusing on snail mail might be hard! Then again, Bunheads was a one season wonder so it’s not as if it’s gonna hold my attention for too too long. So there goes that excuse.

On Saturday, during a discussion of an upcoming fundraiser I had the brilliant idea that maybe I could donate a little time and a lot of photos to the event. “I have,” I said, “a ton of photos that I could turn into greeting cards. Maybe we could sell them at the picnic?”

“Why don’t we auction off one of your photographs?” was the response.

That took me by surprise; after a slight hesitation, I shook my head and said, “No, I think the cards are better.” Ah, insecurity rears it’s ugly head. I don’t know why I am willing to risk none of the cards being bought but am not willing to have a bigger photograph going unclaimed. Maybe it’s just logistics. I’ve done cards before, they’re simply enough and if they don’t sell, I’ll just use them myself. But a bigger photo, I’d want to make sure it prints on good paper, I’d want to mat it well, and get a decent frame. All in a week, when I get home tired and in the mood to just not think or do much. It all seemed like too much energy. Plus, again, there’s the absolute lack of interest in having people not be interested in my artistic eye. I’ve thought about maybe trying to sell stuff online. Every little bit of income coming in now would help. So, if I want to pursue that, I suppose I need to get some tougher skin around the photography skills and get on with enduring some potential rejection.

For now though, I’m gonna just glue some photos to blank cards and scratch the itch to create something in that minimal way.

Wednesday, April 06, 2016

When I revived the blog I said I was doing it because there were things that needed to be written. That remains true. Writing has always been cathartic for me, it was a way to get the swirling thoughts out of my head in a way that made me process emotions, ideas, aspirations, fears, anger, etc. Everything that happened last year should have been accompanied by heavy bouts of writing but I was so out of habit, not just with blogging, but with actual writing that I didn’t do it. As a consequence, all of these words continue to live in my head.

The problem is, I don’t want this to be the cancer blog. I don’t want to have entry after entry of just depressing content. Because, that’s the thing about writing in public, isn’t it? It isn’t just a therapeutic exercise. It’s the creation of “content”; the understanding that the words, once given life outside of myself, are going to be processed by others and that changes things. This isn’t a bad thing, this isn’t a condemnation of living our lives, part of our lives, in public spaces. It’s just a layer. How much that matters is up to each of us.

As I chafe against having every entry be about the cancer, and, hell, if I’m honest the cancer isn’t what I think about or cry over on still a very regular basis. It’s the infertility, stupid. That’s the root of the sadness. So, because I don’t want this to be entry after entry about how that has affected me, I don’t write. I don’t write despite knowing I need to write.

So, for now, I’ll just do a bit of a brain dump:

Thing one: I finished A Tale of Two Cities. I had a hard time finding a groove because of the style of writing. The story itself I enjoyed very much so I know I’ll go back and reread it at some point. I also greatly enjoyed having the chance to discuss the book with someone; so the mini-bookclub was a success in that regard. I realized that while I was aware of the famous first line (It was the best of times…) I wasn’t attributing another famous line to this story. When I read the last line (It is a far, far better thing that I do…) I gasped and thought, “Oh! That is from this book?!?” I know know exactly why I find that note worthy and yet I do. Next up for the mini-bookclub is Atlas Shrugged. It’s one of those books that people reference a lot (especially lately) but that I can’t speak to having never read it. From the little I know about the book the reading and discussion should be interesting.

I am so close to being done with the cross stitch project that I intend to give to my mother on Mother’s Day. I’m generally happy with the way it’s come out. It has been a few years since I worked on a project this big (it’s an 8x11 cross stitch) so it’s given me ample time to become aware of the short cuts I take. I imagine that may improve if I stick with the plan of stitching on a more regular basis. Though I don’t want to impose such a tight deadline on myself for anything else. Getting this done for May has meant putting aside other activities and that’s definitely not a sustainable way to live my life.

Hmm. I thought I had a third thing but maybe the beginning of this entry was thing number one. This will do for now.

Friday, February 26, 2016

I have memories of being an avid reader so despite the fact that my reading levels have gone down steadily for several years now, I still think of myself as being an avid reader. I still love books. I still collect them despite putting myself on a book buying ban back in 2007. It was necessary, really. It wasn’t uncommon for me to buy a dozen books a month and simply put them on the shelf, to be read later. As a consequence, I’ve built a nice diverse personal library. This I consider an accomplishment and it pains me that the bulk of my books have been in storage for three years. I yearn for the day when I am once again surrounded by my books.

When I moved in with friends and was once again living in limited space I carefully chose 30-40 books that I swore would tide me over until I would be on my own again and reunited with my library. Of course, the bulk of those 30-40 books have gone unread as I’ve purchased more books. Due to the limited living quarters, however, I have delved deeper into the e-book market (though I don’t much like it. I do it simply for the convenience. A convenience that I actually dislike and resent so go figure.)

I lost the point of the post immediately after the first two sentences, I believe so let’s get back to it. Despite believing myself to be an avid reader, my reading levels have gone down. So, to do something about it, I convinced a friend to read A Tale of Two Cities with me. Believing that if I had a deadline and a promise of a book discussion I would be more dedicated to the reading.

This would have been, I still contend, a solid plan had I not decided to work on a cross stitching project for Mother’s Day.

As quick background, during the last two trips to El Salvador, I have completed a small, quick cross stitching project for a favored aunt. My mother, while appreciating that I am doing something nice for someone she cares for, has also expressed mild jealousy over the fact that I’ve never done something similar for her.

Still riding the nice mellow high of completing a project, making something pretty that someone really enjoyed, when we came back from our vacation this January, I had the brilliant though of starting a new project and why not kill two birds with one stone and make something for my mother in time for the May observance. But what to stitch for her, I wondered.

I quickly considered and rejected various themes and then I realized something religious would do the trick. Thankfully, Amazon came to the rescue with a cross stitch kit of Our Lady of Guadalupe who she has tremendous appreciation of. Perfect! I though, she’s going to love this. Or so the theory goes and I certainly hope I’m right or I’m going to be ridiculously disappointed.

So what does one have to do with the other you ask? Or maybe you’re not asking and you know exactly where I’m going with this.

The 8.5x11 cross stitch work has been taking up the bulk of my time and, honestly, also my interest. While I have started the book, I’m no where near close to being finished with it and the book discussion is this coming Monday. Trouble! I’m going to have to focus on the book over the weekend, a fact that leaves me wishing I didn’t have to because I want to really only focus on the cross stitch. Leading me to the title of the post, at first I found myself thinking, I wish I had more hours in the day so I could focus on different things, the reality of it is that I would probably still only focus those hours on the cross stitch project. I’m that obsessed with it right now. This is a good thing however. Because I’ve made great progress on it and I have no doubt that I’ll finish it way before the May deadline.

Because I’ve enjoyed working on this so much I’ve been thinking I should get back into the habit of doing one or two projects a year but if I do that, I’m going to need to figure out how to balance out the work because I can’t continue to ignore other things (such as focusing on exercise, reading, photography) simply to churn out cross stitching projects.